Shock never comes gently. It electrifies

& tingles every hair on one’s body.

Without warning—your unexpected passing  

was a seismic shift burying the long ago past.

Although you transitioned in October

when pumpkin faces & ghosts decorated

front doors of houses, it’s taken weeks

for the loss to process in my baffled brain.

Today is St. Stephen’s Day, the first

Christian martyr, brutally stoned to death

by an angry mob. My mind metaphorically

stoned—peering at the wilting poinsettias

& wrapping papers from yesterday’s

Christmas. A holiday disturbed, painted

with the color of death—in the middle

of manufactured joy. Pretending to engage

with the light of the newborn Christ

during this feast of yearly gift giving— 

a hollowness shrouds the tinseled tree 

recalling your Irish face under stage spotlights

glowing as a real-life Blanche Dubois—

graciously smiling, bowing for one last  

curtain call, phantasmagorically  

transforming into dazzling dramatic energy.